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I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon.

Rebecca West

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Rebecca West
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: December 21
Died: 1983
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Suffragette
Writer
London
England
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Feels
Pardon
Believe
Forgiveness
Necessarily
Forget
Understand
Makes
Cannot
Feel

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Unfortunately, all gatherings convened for the betterment of the human lot show a tendency to gas themselves, and not with laughing-gas either.
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There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.
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It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.
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There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.
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But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.
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The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.
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Marriage had certain commercial advantages. By it the man secures the exclusive right to the woman's body and by it, the woman binds the man to support her during the rest of her life.... A more disgraceful bargain was never struck.
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It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
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It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
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The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated he forgets truths which are too simple.
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The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
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Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.
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The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.
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International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.
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If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.
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After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.
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All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.
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It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
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The unsuccessful bully can always become the father of a family.
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It is not possible that a just God should forgive people who are wicked because another person who was good endured agony by being nailed to a cross.
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